I'm about 60 pages away from completing Lord of the Rings. Incredible book(s) and I love it, but once more I gripe about the same old stuff- that Tolkien is ace at evocative worldbuilding (his descriptions of places are amazing), but is less skilled at writing multidimensional characters and believable relationships that weren't bro-mances. I was not buying

Arwen just came out of nowhere and married Aragorn straight out of the blue.

Both of these were things that were done a bazillion times better in the movies.

The most memorable feeling I have is that I want to drink Ent-draught. That stuff sounds like the most wonderfully nourishing thing ever.

I look forward to finishing it, because I really want to read Blackmark (book 1 of Kingsmen Chronicles) by Jean Lowe Carlson. That one was a freebie and I want to see if it's a trilogy I want to pursue. Most of the epic "Game of Thrones" style fantasy novels I've read were by male authors, so I want to read something by an up-and-coming female author.

What a minute. Emily Brontė wrote Wuthering Heights?? How did I mess that up?

Pretty easy to do. Charlotte Brontė was the author of Jane Eyre[i/], and Anne Brontė was the author of Agnes Grey. They all were published and active writers, despite all of them dying tragically young.

I'm not familiar with Agnes Grey, but I know Wuthering Heights is not my thing at all, while Jane Eyre is truly wonderful. I can forgive Charlotte's heedless and shortsighted disdain for Jane Austen, because she walked the walk.

Logged

"You know, you're pretty cool too, Arvis. You like good music, good games, and good tennis." - Divingfalcons

Ugh, Jane Eyre was one of the banes of my existence in high school English class. I so wish Thug Notes existed back when I was a student, because this actually made Jane Eyre make sense to me and actually made it seem kinda interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPlN_HIU55U (Go figure, Thug Notes does in 3 minutes what my high school English teacher couldn't do in 3 weeks.)

Anyway, I'm a short ways into the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire" in Return of the King. Man, that is a totally "Aww Yeah!" righteous chapter and I'm loving it! If I didn't have to keep to my bedtime (I go to bed early because I have to be up at 5AM to get ready and get to work on time) I would have stayed up to finish the chapter and the book, because it rocks. I love when

the Shirriffs are admonishing Frodo's company for breaking a whole bunch of new rules and Merry and Pippin are all like, "Fuck yeah, bitch! And we're gonna break a whole bunch more shit too!" It's like when Bugs Bunny says, "You realize, this means war!" And you know it is on and fools will not be suffered gladly.

UPDATE: I finished Lord of the Rings last night (2/28/2018). The Silmarillion is definitely on my list for future books I want to read, because this and The Hobbit were wonderful (in spite of all my griping). What I loved about them is that the true heroes weren't the proverbial "Aragorn type" of hero, but rather ordinary and rather schlubby-seeming folk in Sam and Frodo. I also found the dynamic of the final chapter interesting in that

The Shire was more ga-ga over Merry, Pippen, and Sam than Frodo (to Sam's dismay), even though Frodo's errand was what started this whole butterfly effect. Frodo was so secretive of his errand in The Shire that none of them really "got" the gravity of it the way Aragorn's realms or the elves did, though the Battle of Bywater was a direct showcase of Merry's, Pippen's, and Sam's true mettle.

So, I started Blackmark by Jean Lowe Carlson. It was a freebie and the start of a fantasy trilogy. I'm about 3-4 chapters in and while I'm not wowed by it, I'm not turned off either. The characters seem cool and the story has potential, but the writing clearly indicates that this author is still getting her sea legs. The narrative sometimes goes on ambling tangents, making some paragraphs feel loose. It's nothing some tighter editing couldn't help. Dialogue also sometimes has instances of more contemporary phrasing. It usually works, but I'm probably just noticing it more because I just got off of reading Lord of the Rings where Tolkien's writing made everything feel otherworldly because it was older (British) English.

I finished reading Ready Player One last night. I thought it was a very enjoyable read. I really liked the quest and the characters. I also thought the future was mostly pretty believable. I'm really looking forward to the movie now despite the fact that it's easy to tell from the trailers that they've changed it up quite a bit. I'm hoping it will be good.

I want to read Armada now, though I've heard it isn't nearly as good. I have it, and I may give it a go since I still have a few days left of Spring Break.

About 100 or so pages into Blackmark. The plot is thickening and some really cool characters are being introduced. As always, the more interesting characters to me are the side characters the "point of view" characters interact with, particularly those in the Olea, Ghrenna, and Dherran chapters thus far. In general, the female POV characters are more interesting than the guys. The most interesting male POV character so far is Dherran.

The writing still loses me on occasion with its paragraph structure (sometimes paragraphs go off on ambling tangents and/or combine two trains of thought that would be more cohesive and comprehensible were they separate paragraphs) and snippets of somewhat modern vernacular that don't always feel smoothly integrated into this fantasy world. The author is creative and the book is filled with potential (which is why I'm still reading it), but she is either still getting her sea legs or doesn't have a good editor to really tighten up the narrative.